Completely unnecessary, but damn if this shouldn't sell you on the combat in this game.

Fuckin' a that looks dope. Love that kind of dodge mechanic, wish more games would use it.

Any thoughts on For Honor? You don't like Ubisoft but you do like good combat, and it looks like they finally may have made a solid combat system. Though their lead designer did take a small potshot at Dark Souls so I doubt that's gonna endear you. Still, I think it looks interesting, kinda like a simplified but flashier version of the combat in Mount & Blade. Aeons better than the combat in literally every other Ubisoft game, baby steps I guess.

Dat dodging, man....

...Play more Japanese games?


Haven't even looked at it. I have zero trust in Ubisoft.


Oh? Where in the vid? Not watching the whole thing...

At 1:00 she says, "it's a melee weapon game but it's not Hack & Slash... and it's not Dark Souls, you cannot avoid any attacks by just rolling around, you actually can get hit when you dodge." But she says it in a qt Québécois accent so it's mitigated slightly.

Here's a timestamped video of the very beginning of the game, with a beginner tutorial for the combat. I think the melee combat system looks okay for a combat game, absolutely amazing for an Ubisoft game.

Ewww that accent

So she's saying there are no invincibility frames? Yeah, pass.

For Honor looks so much funner than Dark Souls, I can't wait to get that one.

What a strange final straw for avoiding something... To my knowledge, all the combat is human v. human (no giant monsters) and there's a huge emphasis on the complex-ish directional parriying system, so dodge is highly contextual. They built the combat system with careful guidance from dozens of experts on various real-world combat styles, to make it as "realistic" as humanly possible.

Whether that translates into actually being fun is anyone's guess, but it's one of the most "indie" new AAA IP I've seen in years and that it would come from you-be-soft of all people is shocking. It's really looking like a big budget M&B at the moment, and how could that be a bad thing?

I played the TitanFall 2 tech test.

Welp. Pretty much everything that made the original game awesome is 100% out of this game. Wallrunning is barely a thing anymore. TitanFall now operates on what is essentially a killstreak system instead of a timer. The two maps included aren't exactly great. I constantly feel like I'm skating on ice, slipping around all insane-like.

Ugh. *sigh*

I'm interested in For Honor because it's a PvP hack'n'slash with gorgeous graphics. But after looking at the combat, it really seems like it is not very interesting? It's just kind of this rock/paper/scissors thing. Also the combat seemed slow enough you might be able to just block/dodge attacks on reaction, which is probably even worse. Maybe there is a lot of depth I am not seeing in it, but what I have seen so far does not leave me with a lot of trust in the devs.

...

It's a game about vikings vs samurai vs templars. You want realism?

Well. Okay then.

The templars win every time. The katanas will bounce off their armour, and their broadswords and halberds will cleave the lighter-armoured vikings like butter.

What a ~fun~ game!




Yeahhhhhh kind of a big deal.

Never before has a western dev made melee combat anything above mediocre. If For Honour is the first to prove me wrong, I'll happily eat crow, but I have no reason to have a shred of faith in them.

I mean I did put realism in quotes. Just sayin' that dodge is used differently in For Honor than a roll is in Dark Souls, seems odd to say that lack of i-frames equals lack of interest.

Severance: Blade of Darkness was made by a Spanish dev team, and that combat system is regarded highly by many. Gothic 2's melee combat is equal to any Souls game and probably Bloodborne, but it has shitty handmade animations and only accommodates 1-handed and 2-handed weapons for melee, so it's nowhere near the variety and visual polish of a Souls game. But it also came out in like 2002, and there's a lot more to the game than combat.

Taleworlds is Turkish and Warband's combat system is incredibly deep but still perfectly balanced... if very different from pretty much every other combat system in gaming.

Prince of Persia 1 had perfectly fine melee combat. It's when you make a whole game about combat and only combat that it gets boring and people start obsessing over "combat mechanics", and the western developers aren't the ones to blame for that development.

Heh, I think that's a pretty weird comparison. Pitting 2D platformers against 3D tactical combat games is pretty, er, um, edgey.

Anyway, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic was made by a French dev team, and that game's melee combat system is fucking peerless. Too bad pretty much everything else about the game is absolutely terrible.

Kicking orcs - or getting kicked by orcs - down a mountain... What else do you need? I don't really remember much of the plot, acting or sound design of the game, except that the latter wasn't too bad, line delivery was probably pretty wooden and level graphics rather messy at times. But I remember the level design not being too bad and downright fun - if simplistic - at times. The sneak didn't work too well, if I remember correct, but hell, once you got used to Thief's (1 & 2) mechanic, everything else was just poor.

It was likely innovative for its time but has long been outclassed. I don't believe for a second that it comes anywhere near Soulsborne, Dragon's Dogma, Nioh or Ys quality.


idontbelieveyou.gif

Graphically, not even in the same universe. Mechanically... yeah, pretty much. About the same variety of weapon types, about the same variety of enemy types each requiring careful pattern memorization and planning for how to handle each enemy type, a similar type of stamina management, a similar type of potion management, similar brutal unforgiving difficulty with a sharp curve and similar stats-help-but-nothing-beats-pure-skill design. Not saying FROM ripped them off or that it's better, just that I really wouldn't call it a "mediocre melee combat system" even if you ignore its age. I played it for a second time just last year (thanks again, BlindTortureKill!) and it's still great.


The advantage to only having two melee weapon types is they can be polished to a mirror shine. Your moves are: left swing, right swing, forward combo attack, parry and backstep (dodge). Each of the 3 attacks can be chained with one another, but you have to time each attack so it falls on the heels of the previous or else the game gives you a speed penalty and/or it breaks the combo. The parry can block all weapon attacks but you cannot parade and there's a short gap between each parry, so you have to mix it carefully with your dodge/backstep which you're invulnerable during but it too has a short gap. Every enemy requires different timings/attacks/pattern memorization etc, and there's an absolutely insane variety of enemy types in the game.

But that's not what makes the combat cool. What makes it cool is that both of the weapon types have 4 different "stages," and for each stage ALL of the attack animations change to reflect how your character is learning from the various trainers in the world. Level up your 1-handed skill from Rookie to Fighter and your left and right attacks change from clunky slow swings that look like a blindfolded kid trying to hit a pinata to a more elegant, quicker attack that hits in a slightly larger radius. Your forward combo attack begins with only two attack animations, but by the end you'll have 7 or 8 and each animation is entirely different from the animations in the last stage. Like Severance, it's heavily skill based so you can take on extremely powerful enemies without taking damage if you have enough skill. This is a "fighter" level 1-h taking on a high level enemy thanks to skill, not stats:

What I find amusing is that as she's hyping the realism and weight of the combat as compared to the invincibility frames of Dark Souls, the gameplay video shows the player character warping twenty feet to engage with an enemy.

Someone on the editing team dropped the ball on that one.

Hate to burst your bubble DD, but those camera angles are absolutely dreadful. How can you even play like that? Holy shit.

That's not me. I have no idea why he's zoomed out so far. The camera in G2 is generally really good considering it's a huge open-world game from 2002.

Hell yes. I love Souls games but I'd go so far as to say Severance combat is even superior. Sure, there's no rolling (though no invincibiliy frames either) or fancy armor (not to mention cool looking bosses) but there's nothing close to that feeling you get from executing a perfectly timed and right move and lopping your opponents head off in Dark Souls. Also, looking at Dragon's Dogma gameplay on YT, I'd say it doesn't even come close to the glorious combat system of Severance. I'm still waiting for devs to take note.

I really need to replay Gothic 1 and 2.

The Void is super good, but it's a little frustratingly obtuse with some of its mechanics at first, and is deceptively difficult. It seems like you have plenty of time to just fudge around and experiment, while basically as soon as you can start "farming" color, you need to be farming your little heart out or you'll starve. Also, some of the bosses can be pretty tricky.

However, once you know what you're supposed to be doing, it's an amazing game. Bosses are one thing but basically every single level in the game is a work of art, the Sisters' realms especially.

Can you set yourself on fire and climb a griffin to set it on fire, in Severance? Can you climb a cyclops and stab it in the eye, or cut off hydra snakes and burn them off to prevent regeneration? Can you summon tornadoes and meteors, or fire a magic projectile from your bow that bounces around in a narrow corridor? Can you wrap your shield with ice, and then do a perfect block to freeze enemies (or use fire and burn them)? Can you whack a big-ass chimera in the face with a big charged attack? Can you smack ogres and dragons around with a whip made of lightning? And that's just scratching the surface.





This is moderately impressive for 15 years ago, but I fail to see how I'm supposed to crave this kind of combat today when it's been improved by several orders of magnitude. Like, take off the nostalgia goggles guys... At least it does look a bit better than that Gothic video above, where the guy looks like he's waving his sword like a feather duster. >_<

And let's keep in mind that mechanics aren't everything. Kingdoms of Amalur had mechanically competent combat, with responsive controls, decent hitboxes, cool abilities... all of which never got to shine because the enemy design is milquetoast and the difficulty balance is so out of whack that you can just button mash your way to victory. A good combat system requires good encounters to be fun.

That's why Ys games are so good; the mechanics are super simple, very few fancy moves to pull off, but the skill ceiling is quite high thanks to amazingly designed boss fights.

No, that all sounds cool and everything (though a bit gimmicky, overpowering and even button -> awesome), but when it comes to pure, realistic sword fighting Severance still has no equal. The video of Dragon's Dogma combat I've seen looks pretty much like mindless button mashing to me, throwing 5 enemies 10 feet into the air with a single blow and such, but I guess you can't have realistic and challenging sword fighting when you have to deal with big-ass mythological creatures or 5+ enemies at once.

Here's a list of some of the moves, which you have to time right and which you can't pull off unless you have enough stamina (pool increases with leveling) in Severance:



If I remember correctly, you can connect some of these moves into a longer combo, and you also actually have to practice these for a while before it becomes second nature to you. Even then it can be a bit tricky to pull off while you're fighting a relentless enemy who can interrupt your move with a single hit (and stunlocking works both ways). Nothing like that in Souls games, for example, except parrying which is still a one click action.



As I said, when it comes to pure sword fighting, I've yet to see improvements 15 years later. I'll be honest and say Severance has no parrying, though.

Nah, unless your stats/gear is OP compared to the enemy you are fighting, of course.


Jesus fucking christ, no, not even close.

That's the thing with a lot of western games; they don't know how to do all those cool things without resorting to QTEs, button mashing, or Press A to Awesome shit. Look at Shadow of Mordor or even Witcher 3's whirl attack where you just mindlessly tap square and all the "badass" animations follow effortlessly (Shadow of Mordor was especially egregious). That is typical of combat in western action games, but if you've ever played a Japanese action game, particularly a Capcom game, you'd know that this is not how they do things.

That said it is true that the combat in DD is focused on fighting either large groups of weaker mobs (don't underestimate those bandits on Hard mode though, they'll wreck your shit up early game xD), or large monsters. For 1v1 duels, however, you might want to look at Nioh again. Particularly this boss fight against a samurai who challenges you to a duel. Here's a few examples of how different players of various playstyles tackled him:

Spear battle

Sword + dual sword battle

Level 1 wooden sword naked (from the same insane youtuber who punched the Ancient Dragon to death haha)

Bare fists/counter battle (+ occasional hammer strike the critical hits when the enemy is out of ki/stamina):

Of course all these Youtubers are exceptionally skilled (I think the second one has very strong gear too, might be overlevelled?), most players will get absolutely wrecked by this boss over and over. They use the stance switching really well to vary their attacks and dodges, perfectly time the ki pulses (stamina recovery burst), use all the relevant abilities at their disposal at all the right times (such as the iai draw, ki-breaking combos, finishers, etc.). But this gives you a good idea of how far melee combat has come. And that's not showing the other combat options such as using the axe/hammers, using magic or ninjutsu abilities, etc.

And this is from a beta!

Nioh seems to have incredibly deep combat, from what I've seen. The whole stance system, while simple on paper, adds lots of layers to fights. Then, with the different types of weapons, you get yet another layer. Finally, as the enemies seems to play by the exact same rules as the player (complete with a visible stamina bar that they can run out of), just.... damn, Nioh. You's cool as fuuuuck.

^ There's also customizable abilities and customizable combo finishers that these videos don't necessarily showcase. I can't wait for the full game and dive into all of that. Please be 2016...

I played Dragon's Dogma for about 1 week, then got sidetracked by work and never went back for some reason... probably should rectify that at one point. I think part of it was I was expecting it to be a bit more hardcore than it actually was, and also everything outside of combat was much too straightforward for my liking. Even Skyrim had more varied and interesting quests and better writing (!!!) than DD. I know that wasn't the focus, but it was still fairly present in the game with a number of cutscenes and a bunch of (mostly terrible) dialog. Also, I didn't like the pawn system at all, especially the online component.

But the combat was a looooooot more in-depth than mindless 'awesome button' mashing, and it easily had the best magic combat I've ever seen in an action RPG. Still seemed a bit too easy, but I never touched the expansion pack that apparently ramped up the difficulty in a really good way. Will definitely finish it at some point.

You could always play on Hard for some extra challenge, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, as it makes early game pretty brutal (and sometimes tedious, as some enemies become damage sponges) but later-game pretty easy (you'll be swimming in gold and XP real fast) outside of Bitterblack Isle. It's never been that hard regardless, though, but you can customize your difficulty setting by, say, choosing to go solo (if you hate the pawn system, don't use it -- I think it's neat as fuck though) or using only one pawn instead of a party of 4, for example.

DD isn't about Fallout-type of role-playing with dialogue branches and whatnot, it is mostly about exploration, looting, and of course the combat (basically an open world dungeon crawler, which suits me just fine). The story does go into interesting places near the end but for most of the game it's just kind of there. As for cut scenes, they're mostly in the beginning, basically the obligatory, tedious exposition, then they are fairly rare at least. I've never found it too intrusive.

DD's story is basically "this dragon is an asshole and kidnapped your insides. Go kill him and waste any huge beasties you find in the way". The plot is little more than an excuse to enable dramatic monster slaying, and I see no problem with that.

that's funny because this is exactly how I play Fallout.

OK help me out here. I have a bunch of new metal to listen to (mostly Death, a bit of Doom and Gothic), and need something to do while listening to all the albums I'm checking out. What are some good games to play while listening to metal? Something with a dismal aesthetic. I was thinking Diablo, but I think the game's music is so necessary to the atmosphere that it kinda doesn't work. Diablo 2 doesn't have that problem, but then I gotta play Diablo 2. Any other grimdark stuff like this that would work?

Did you beat the game? It gets... weird But you're right, I don't care either. I don't need a real reason to climb on a dragon's back and stab it in the face.


Lies, nobody enjoy Fallout's combat.


Ehhh most "grimdark" games need their soundtracks for the atmosphere. Can't really think of anything.

Edit: maybe the new Doom? You sure can't go wrong with replacing that abomination of djenty chugging wanking

I've been playing Ride To Hell: Retribution, and I have absolutely no clue why I bought this game. I've only been playing for 20 minutes, and I'm already regretting it.

This is like a game you'd get in that damn box they had on That Metal Show.

That game is infamous for being one of the worst games ever released. I don't know what you expected.

I dug a valley, went to the lowest point, and kicked a bunch of dirt until there was a decent sized hole. I then shoved the bar at the lowest part of that hole.

The fuck-ass piece of shit failed to even reach that.

I've honestly never been so impressed by something being this stupendously awful before.

Still better than Extreme Paintbrawl.

What I expected:



What I got:

Scuse me for dragging this out of the dark, but I'm well keen on keeping an eye on this game. It's PC only at the moment of it's release, but I'm hoping for a PS4 version if it does, and plays well. Looks really fucking awesome visually.

What you got still looks better than what you expected. Small victories?